Breaking Bread With An Awesome Kid

(I work at a supermarket in New York City. I generally work in the bread department, making sure the shelves are stocked and the bread gets rotated. A four-year-old girl and her mother enter the section to look at the bread while I’m kneeling on the floor, rotating bread on a bottom shelf.)

Little Girl: *from behind me* “Hello!”

(I turn around to see her.)

Me: “Hi!”

Little Girl: “Whatcha doing?”

(I’m not sure how to explain my job to a four-year-old in a way she’ll understand.)

Me: “I’m, uh, counting the bread.”

(The little girl looks around the section with eyes wide.)

Little Girl: “How much bread is there?”

Me: “12.”

(Her eyes go as big as saucers and she claps her hands to her cheeks in over-exaggerated surprise.)

Little Girl: “That’s a LOT of bread! Mommy, did you hear that? There’s a LOT of bread!”

(She and her mother stuck around a little longer while she told me all about what her favorite bread is and how she liked that it was warm out today, because she thought it was never going to be warm outside ever again. It made my day.)